Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts

Exhibition Introduction

A Secret Process : Discovering Dis-paracolonizer from the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden"

By Huang Chien-Hung(Director of KdMoFA)

On an afternoon in 2015, Sunjung Kim introduced me to Tuan Mami, who was in residence in Gwangju. He spoke about his work "Safety" (2007), which involved installations and performances using condoms, and went on to discuss his discovery of many Vietnamese brides and new immigrant families in Gwangju. Later, in 2016, he completed a community art project involving Vietnamese spouses at the National Asian Culture Center. The women sat side by side at a height, knitting with red yarn balls placed below, creating a simple vertical theater space that transmitted a mix of trans-generational life narratives and fragments. Mythology, the Vietnam War, and foreign families overlapped in the life stories of multiple women.

In 2017, he was invited to the "ADAM Project," and we chatted at the MoCA Taipei the day after the "Crossing Justice" exhibition opening (2018) about his investigations and works over the past few years. At that time, his focus was on the environmental crisis in his mother's hometown, which had become a mining area. This later became the project the project “In One’s Breath-Nothing Stands Still” (2017) in the "Co/Inspiration in Catastrophes" exhibition (2019). This project involved a complex experiment using various media, including performances, to explore the intricate connections between life and environment, particularly the economic biopolitics emerging under globalization and the localized daily violence acting on people and the environment.

Then, during a chance meeting over coffee before the pandemic, I heard about his "Silent Garden" project. Having just taken on the role of director at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, I suggested to him that we create a Vietnamese garden at the museum, to be developed over ten years... Subsequently, in 2022 and 2023, the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden" continued to evolve at “documenta” in Kassel, the Japanese Garden in Dresden, and the Osaka Kansai International Art Festival. There is no coincidence — the evolution of life for plants and migrants is by no means accidental.

"In the sense of taking nature as a facsimile for art, it can be said that garden art is superior to landscape painting. The landscaping in art of gardens directly captures the beauty unfolded by nature without the need for artistic intervention, whether rustic or magnificent, or it can be said to come directly from nature as the artist. This is a radical new idea — nature recognized through the gathering of trees, water, and rocks on the extended land, is no longer merely a facsimile for artists to imitate, because it is the artist itself. Its art is the presentation of scenery. (...)” (Jacques Rancière, The Time of the Landscape: On the Origins of the Aesthetic Revolution, 2020: p. 30)

For Rancière, "nature" refers to a power that brings multiplicity into a "whole" (tout). Thus, the "garden," which gradually entered the realm of discourse in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, is a recognition of nature and a reflection on art. "Art of gardening" (to garden, gardening) is not "horticulture." For Rancière, "art of gardening" is a form of questioning, a re-examination of the dichotomy between art and nature. However, the "art of gardening" that Kant attempted to incorporate into the category of fine arts was later popularized as a craft, while also sharing the same fate as nature – being excluded from art as the value of "human" increased. Ranciere's radicality lies in the departure of the "artist" subject from humans. With "nature" as the artist subject, what new role will the identity of "artist", originally possessed by humans, play?

Artist, as an intervener, transforms into a "caretaker," taking care of the "nature-artist" that manifests as "free." In other words, a separation occurs between the artist and art. "Art" imitates the "multiple-whole" (tout-multiple) created by the "nature-artist," and we (so-called art workers) are like mediators (intercesseurs). Strictly speaking, the creator of "art of gardening" imitates the various scenes created by the "nature-artist," not simply to represent "nature," but to question the power of nature – that is, the "freedom" that Rancière extends from Kant's definition.

Therefore, we can even say that the "garden" is an experimental deployment, an Gestell (enframing) that questions the power of nature, aimed at exploring the "freedom" created by "nature." From Rancière's re-interpretation of Kant's "garden art," what Tuan Mami's "Secret Garden" seeks to question is precisely this power of nature existing in the "garden" or "to garden" (jardiner). Is it possible to become a negentropy technique for establishing relationships in migrant communities? Is it possible to create "freedom" for the Vietnamese immigrant/worker/spouse community in Taiwan?

Since 2021, Hanoi-based artist Tuan Mami has been collaborating with the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts on the "Silent Garden" project. By then, the artist had had already begun conducting field research in Taiwan on early Vietnamese refugees, foreign spouses, and current Vietnamese migrant workers and students, with the research area spaning from the north to the central and southern parts. In the process, he discovered that many Vietnamese, after being prohibited from bringing plants into the country by customs, secretly carried seeds or sought seeds through networks. They would then silently plant them in various low-visibility open spaces, growing cooking herbs from their homeland. Just like the artist's own home in Hanoi, which also has a garden, and the space he later established, which also has a garden.

Subsequently, this project evolved into the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden," which he exhibited at various exhibitions and art festivals. Among these, the operation at the Documenta 15 "lumbung" being the most complete in form, especially occurring on a concrete scale in the city (Kassel). The aesthetic revolutionary proposition of the "garden" organically resonated with the desires of life, transforming into the poetic fluidity of a "vegetable garden" amidst the "speculation" of various realistic situations in real life.

Here, the artist is not "nature", but the "making-as" (being affected or shaped) that connects life experiences and emotions. These "making-as" drive individuals among the "migrants" to undertake actions of various "secret" gardens. As an artist, Tuan Mami brings voice to “the secret” and "the silent," this mediator is no longer a caretaker, but a "dis-paracolonizer" for those who have come to Taiwan as a new caretaker.

The "secret" or "silent" in the secret garden, silent garden or mute process ("Immigrant Garden") is first of all something that cannot be identified as reasonable or legitimate excluded from "labor" or "profit," a nameless action seeking "definite happiness." This action allows individuals to preserve a cultural and spiritual connection with one's homeland.

This involves not only caring for plants but also caring for memory and bodily sensations. Additionally, the process relies on the transplantation of ecological relationships and environmental fragments. Through the cycle of care and harvest by migrants, plants become both derivatives of life as well as metaphors and exploring tentacles of lives.

With these two beforementioned internal relationships and cultural ties, there emerges the possibility of communication among these migrants, transcending different encounters and developmental disparities. This integration leads to the community experience of life interaction and cultural migration in a foreign land. However, the most profound aspect within is marking a posture on crossing national boundaries, which creates a discreet, noble yet humble escape for self-preservation.

If the "garden" is a facsimile of various scenes created by the "nature-artist," this facsimile can develop into a "nature-system" that demonstrates cosmology. Like a "landscape garden," it transforms internality into a landscape system composed of natural materials, resembling one after another paintings-movie constructed at walking speed, or in other word, works of "cosmic art" (kósmos technès).

Yet, the "vegetable garden" further breaks away from the pure transcends the pure "intuitive" projection above-mentioned onto natural objects, embedding more layers of life relations and life connections, intertwined with labor, the pace of conversations, the posture of observation and searching, and the intertwining and inner-unfolding of different life mechanisms. This creates a kind of evolution of action videos between short clips and long takes: a work of life art (zoe technès).

The silence of plants provides a crucial sense of security for those planting in a foreign land. This sense of security means that their life imagery is protected and preserved, and the "closed" and "silent" form of seeds gradually becomes a symbol of "promise" for the future. The transmission and growth of these edible seeds offer Vietnamese migrants involved in the project certain expectations for "life": First, they serve as a spiritual connection to their land (homeland); second, they act as a silent mediator between migrants and Taiwan, helping overcome life conflicts; third, they become an "immanence" that extends life externally, serving as an equal language and silent discourse in exchanges; fourth, the artist facilitates the integration of life between plants and migrants, with plants entering into complex migration issues, while migrants infuse their interiority into the endless details of plant growth.

Tuan Mami captures how "seeds" link their cross-cultural daily life and emotions in migration. In the process of this project, "seeds" unfold multi-layered meanings for migrants, communities, and the artist. These layered meanings are not metaphorical but are energies that trigger the practical significance of emotions, actions and relationships.

In the garden, nature and participants are also the artists co-operating on edible materials, while Tuan Mami can be described as a "dis-paracolonizer" with seeds as his subject. The dis-paracolonizer turns seeds into unsolved puzzles, constantly discovering and creating space within the puzzle itself.

This allows us to imagine the tensions, power relations, violent conflicts, and interests that may arise between migrants and locals, between migrants and new lands, and between secret plants and locals, which can be "dissolved" in the evolution of the "garden."

Tuan Mami, who played a crucial role during the transition period of Nhà Sàn (Stilt House) Collective as a key planner and organizer, took us to meet the founder of the artist collective in a wooden base in Hanoi where they gather. Surrounded by many wooden carved deities, we enjoyed home-brewed alcohol under a large tree in the garden. The next day, at both Tuan Mami's home and another artist's residence, we saw gardens filled with a variety of intertwining plants. Indeed, their steps and pace still engage in the most ordinary daily touch with the flora.

When I saw the "garden" gradually taking shape and flourishing at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, I could almost hear the footsteps of those days under the scorching sun in Hanoi. Undoubtedly, this is the power of Tuan Mami's art, a power of "life art" (which is also cosmic art).

Exhibition Introduction

A Secret Process : Discovering Dis-paracolonizer from the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden"

By Huang Chien-Hung(Director of KdMoFA)

On an afternoon in 2015, Sunjung Kim introduced me to Tuan Mami, who was in residence in Gwangju. He spoke about his work "Safety" (2007), which involved installations and performances using condoms, and went on to discuss his discovery of many Vietnamese brides and new immigrant families in Gwangju. Later, in 2016, he completed a community art project involving Vietnamese spouses at the National Asian Culture Center. The women sat side by side at a height, knitting with red yarn balls placed below, creating a simple vertical theater space that transmitted a mix of trans-generational life narratives and fragments. Mythology, the Vietnam War, and foreign families overlapped in the life stories of multiple women.

In 2017, he was invited to the "ADAM Project," and we chatted at the MoCA Taipei the day after the "Crossing Justice" exhibition opening (2018) about his investigations and works over the past few years. At that time, his focus was on the environmental crisis in his mother's hometown, which had become a mining area. This later became the project the project “In One’s Breath-Nothing Stands Still” (2017) in the "Co/Inspiration in Catastrophes" exhibition (2019). This project involved a complex experiment using various media, including performances, to explore the intricate connections between life and environment, particularly the economic biopolitics emerging under globalization and the localized daily violence acting on people and the environment.

Then, during a chance meeting over coffee before the pandemic, I heard about his "Silent Garden" project. Having just taken on the role of director at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, I suggested to him that we create a Vietnamese garden at the museum, to be developed over ten years... Subsequently, in 2022 and 2023, the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden" continued to evolve at “documenta” in Kassel, the Japanese Garden in Dresden, and the Osaka Kansai International Art Festival. There is no coincidence — the evolution of life for plants and migrants is by no means accidental.

"In the sense of taking nature as a facsimile for art, it can be said that garden art is superior to landscape painting. The landscaping in art of gardens directly captures the beauty unfolded by nature without the need for artistic intervention, whether rustic or magnificent, or it can be said to come directly from nature as the artist. This is a radical new idea — nature recognized through the gathering of trees, water, and rocks on the extended land, is no longer merely a facsimile for artists to imitate, because it is the artist itself. Its art is the presentation of scenery. (...)” (Jacques Rancière, The Time of the Landscape: On the Origins of the Aesthetic Revolution, 2020: p. 30)

For Rancière, "nature" refers to a power that brings multiplicity into a "whole" (tout). Thus, the "garden," which gradually entered the realm of discourse in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, is a recognition of nature and a reflection on art. "Art of gardening" (to garden, gardening) is not "horticulture." For Rancière, "art of gardening" is a form of questioning, a re-examination of the dichotomy between art and nature. However, the "art of gardening" that Kant attempted to incorporate into the category of fine arts was later popularized as a craft, while also sharing the same fate as nature – being excluded from art as the value of "human" increased. Ranciere's radicality lies in the departure of the "artist" subject from humans. With "nature" as the artist subject, what new role will the identity of "artist", originally possessed by humans, play?

Artist, as an intervener, transforms into a "caretaker," taking care of the "nature-artist" that manifests as "free." In other words, a separation occurs between the artist and art. "Art" imitates the "multiple-whole" (tout-multiple) created by the "nature-artist," and we (so-called art workers) are like mediators (intercesseurs). Strictly speaking, the creator of "art of gardening" imitates the various scenes created by the "nature-artist," not simply to represent "nature," but to question the power of nature – that is, the "freedom" that Rancière extends from Kant's definition.

Therefore, we can even say that the "garden" is an experimental deployment, an Gestell (enframing) that questions the power of nature, aimed at exploring the "freedom" created by "nature." From Rancière's re-interpretation of Kant's "garden art," what Tuan Mami's "Secret Garden" seeks to question is precisely this power of nature existing in the "garden" or "to garden" (jardiner). Is it possible to become a negentropy technique for establishing relationships in migrant communities? Is it possible to create "freedom" for the Vietnamese immigrant/worker/spouse community in Taiwan?

Since 2021, Hanoi-based artist Tuan Mami has been collaborating with the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts on the "Silent Garden" project. By then, the artist had had already begun conducting field research in Taiwan on early Vietnamese refugees, foreign spouses, and current Vietnamese migrant workers and students, with the research area spaning from the north to the central and southern parts. In the process, he discovered that many Vietnamese, after being prohibited from bringing plants into the country by customs, secretly carried seeds or sought seeds through networks. They would then silently plant them in various low-visibility open spaces, growing cooking herbs from their homeland. Just like the artist's own home in Hanoi, which also has a garden, and the space he later established, which also has a garden.

Subsequently, this project evolved into the "Vietnamese Immigrating Garden," which he exhibited at various exhibitions and art festivals. Among these, the operation at the Documenta 15 "lumbung" being the most complete in form, especially occurring on a concrete scale in the city (Kassel). The aesthetic revolutionary proposition of the "garden" organically resonated with the desires of life, transforming into the poetic fluidity of a "vegetable garden" amidst the "speculation" of various realistic situations in real life.

Here, the artist is not "nature", but the "making-as" (being affected or shaped) that connects life experiences and emotions. These "making-as" drive individuals among the "migrants" to undertake actions of various "secret" gardens. As an artist, Tuan Mami brings voice to “the secret” and "the silent," this mediator is no longer a caretaker, but a "dis-paracolonizer" for those who have come to Taiwan as a new caretaker.

The "secret" or "silent" in the secret garden, silent garden or mute process ("Immigrant Garden") is first of all something that cannot be identified as reasonable or legitimate excluded from "labor" or "profit," a nameless action seeking "definite happiness." This action allows individuals to preserve a cultural and spiritual connection with one's homeland.

This involves not only caring for plants but also caring for memory and bodily sensations. Additionally, the process relies on the transplantation of ecological relationships and environmental fragments. Through the cycle of care and harvest by migrants, plants become both derivatives of life as well as metaphors and exploring tentacles of lives.

With these two beforementioned internal relationships and cultural ties, there emerges the possibility of communication among these migrants, transcending different encounters and developmental disparities. This integration leads to the community experience of life interaction and cultural migration in a foreign land. However, the most profound aspect within is marking a posture on crossing national boundaries, which creates a discreet, noble yet humble escape for self-preservation.

If the "garden" is a facsimile of various scenes created by the "nature-artist," this facsimile can develop into a "nature-system" that demonstrates cosmology. Like a "landscape garden," it transforms internality into a landscape system composed of natural materials, resembling one after another paintings-movie constructed at walking speed, or in other word, works of "cosmic art" (kósmos technès).

Yet, the "vegetable garden" further breaks away from the pure transcends the pure "intuitive" projection above-mentioned onto natural objects, embedding more layers of life relations and life connections, intertwined with labor, the pace of conversations, the posture of observation and searching, and the intertwining and inner-unfolding of different life mechanisms. This creates a kind of evolution of action videos between short clips and long takes: a work of life art (zoe technès).

The silence of plants provides a crucial sense of security for those planting in a foreign land. This sense of security means that their life imagery is protected and preserved, and the "closed" and "silent" form of seeds gradually becomes a symbol of "promise" for the future. The transmission and growth of these edible seeds offer Vietnamese migrants involved in the project certain expectations for "life": First, they serve as a spiritual connection to their land (homeland); second, they act as a silent mediator between migrants and Taiwan, helping overcome life conflicts; third, they become an "immanence" that extends life externally, serving as an equal language and silent discourse in exchanges; fourth, the artist facilitates the integration of life between plants and migrants, with plants entering into complex migration issues, while migrants infuse their interiority into the endless details of plant growth.

Tuan Mami captures how "seeds" link their cross-cultural daily life and emotions in migration. In the process of this project, "seeds" unfold multi-layered meanings for migrants, communities, and the artist. These layered meanings are not metaphorical but are energies that trigger the practical significance of emotions, actions and relationships.

In the garden, nature and participants are also the artists co-operating on edible materials, while Tuan Mami can be described as a "dis-paracolonizer" with seeds as his subject. The dis-paracolonizer turns seeds into unsolved puzzles, constantly discovering and creating space within the puzzle itself.

This allows us to imagine the tensions, power relations, violent conflicts, and interests that may arise between migrants and locals, between migrants and new lands, and between secret plants and locals, which can be "dissolved" in the evolution of the "garden."

Tuan Mami, who played a crucial role during the transition period of Nhà Sàn (Stilt House) Collective as a key planner and organizer, took us to meet the founder of the artist collective in a wooden base in Hanoi where they gather. Surrounded by many wooden carved deities, we enjoyed home-brewed alcohol under a large tree in the garden. The next day, at both Tuan Mami's home and another artist's residence, we saw gardens filled with a variety of intertwining plants. Indeed, their steps and pace still engage in the most ordinary daily touch with the flora.

When I saw the "garden" gradually taking shape and flourishing at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, I could almost hear the footsteps of those days under the scorching sun in Hanoi. Undoubtedly, this is the power of Tuan Mami's art, a power of "life art" (which is also cosmic art).

Artits' Statement

The project’s conception in 2020 coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and its consequent series of global lockdowns. At the time, I was undertaking a fellowship in Taiwan. Unable to depart from Taipei due to the pandemic’s travel restrictions, I took advantage of Taiwan’s internal freedom of movement in order to carry out a series of conversations with Vietnamese diasporic communities and migrant workers. Being an island state, Taiwan has historically enforced strict regulations on the importation of flora and fauna, thus rendering the smuggling of living plants an illegal and punishable act. Despite these restrictions, however, the importation of plants for personal use and, sometimes, commercial distribution, has been ongoing since the 1970s. Of particular significance for my artistic practice was product of this importation; the existence of discreet and illicit urban gardens. Due to climatic similarities with Vietnam, plants were often embedded into public spaces outdoors, such as roadsides and rooftops. This may be extended to think of the informal ‘gardens’ in Taiwan as embodiments of macro and micro histories; from national policies of labour relations between the two countries, to individual and familial stories. It is also the basis for my decision to develop the Vietnamese Immigrating Garden as a participatory project which would explore the Vietnamese diasporic experience within – and against - notions of nationhood, belonging and purity in Taiwan.

Moreover, with Vietnamese Migrating Garden as a social platform or a garden, I want to explore the concepts of homeland and local cultures, and how these ideas interact in the new lands and new contexts. In addition, the project also focuses on how socio-political issues affect the formation of habits and cultures of migrating communities. With this project, many stories are gathered and shared amongst different aspects of life, the project aims to create hopes for people who are disconnected from their homeland and their culture in establishing their new identities.

This proposal is an expansion of my research about Vietnamese immigrating plants in different countries from Asia to Western Countries, and a research about plants as matters of human emotion, memory, culture, also as matters of politics.

This ongoing trans-geographic / trans-political interdisciplinary project aims to re-learn our human’s migrating history by looking into immigrated plants’ traces which come along with people who are colonizers, invaders, political refugees, imported laborers, economical seekers, students etc., with this research, I try to discover the hierarchies in the structures of our politics, our powers, our benefits, our social matters and raising the question ‘Is it enough to question?’.

In addition, the idea of this research is to unlearn our history, unlearn our now-aday matters, and bring them together into an open-dialogue for finding more equalities, more space for humanity, and more understanding towards our becoming-political system.

To push the limitations of performance art, I am developing the "Performative Installation" that considers an art works as an environment, a platforms or a situation. As an extension of my study of history and society of Vietnamese immigrants, I intend to build a " Garden" for the encounter between art and life.

How can the Vietnamese plants adapt themselves to survive in a new environment? Why they are illegal to bring in nowadays? Why the smells and tastes of foods/drinks/traditional medicines from home vegetables and herbs are important to Vietnamese people? What are the journeys behind their stories to have immigrating plants? This project focuses on a dialogue between the ‘Natural & Human Power’ relationship, and its impact on our mentality and our daily life.

The garden is based mainly on supports, and sharing resources, stories from Vietnamese community in Taiwan. The work will be a social platform for interactions for exchanges, collaborations, and sharing resources (includes performative events such as cooking, karaoke together...)

Artits' Statement

The project’s conception in 2020 coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and its consequent series of global lockdowns. At the time, I was undertaking a fellowship in Taiwan. Unable to depart from Taipei due to the pandemic’s travel restrictions, I took advantage of Taiwan’s internal freedom of movement in order to carry out a series of conversations with Vietnamese diasporic communities and migrant workers. Being an island state, Taiwan has historically enforced strict regulations on the importation of flora and fauna, thus rendering the smuggling of living plants an illegal and punishable act. Despite these restrictions, however, the importation of plants for personal use and, sometimes, commercial distribution, has been ongoing since the 1970s. Of particular significance for my artistic practice was product of this importation; the existence of discreet and illicit urban gardens. Due to climatic similarities with Vietnam, plants were often embedded into public spaces outdoors, such as roadsides and rooftops. This may be extended to think of the informal ‘gardens’ in Taiwan as embodiments of macro and micro histories; from national policies of labour relations between the two countries, to individual and familial stories. It is also the basis for my decision to develop the Vietnamese Immigrating Garden as a participatory project which would explore the Vietnamese diasporic experience within – and against - notions of nationhood, belonging and purity in Taiwan.

Moreover, with Vietnamese Migrating Garden as a social platform or a garden, I want to explore the concepts of homeland and local cultures, and how these ideas interact in the new lands and new contexts. In addition, the project also focuses on how socio-political issues affect the formation of habits and cultures of migrating communities. With this project, many stories are gathered and shared amongst different aspects of life, the project aims to create hopes for people who are disconnected from their homeland and their culture in establishing their new identities.

This proposal is an expansion of my research about Vietnamese immigrating plants in different countries from Asia to Western Countries, and a research about plants as matters of human emotion, memory, culture, also as matters of politics.

This ongoing trans-geographic / trans-political interdisciplinary project aims to re-learn our human’s migrating history by looking into immigrated plants’ traces which come along with people who are colonizers, invaders, political refugees, imported laborers, economical seekers, students etc., with this research, I try to discover the hierarchies in the structures of our politics, our powers, our benefits, our social matters and raising the question ‘Is it enough to question?’.

In addition, the idea of this research is to unlearn our history, unlearn our now-aday matters, and bring them together into an open-dialogue for finding more equalities, more space for humanity, and more understanding towards our becoming-political system.

To push the limitations of performance art, I am developing the "Performative Installation" that considers an art works as an environment, a platforms or a situation. As an extension of my study of history and society of Vietnamese immigrants, I intend to build a " Garden" for the encounter between art and life.

How can the Vietnamese plants adapt themselves to survive in a new environment? Why they are illegal to bring in nowadays? Why the smells and tastes of foods/drinks/traditional medicines from home vegetables and herbs are important to Vietnamese people? What are the journeys behind their stories to have immigrating plants? This project focuses on a dialogue between the ‘Natural & Human Power’ relationship, and its impact on our mentality and our daily life.

The garden is based mainly on supports, and sharing resources, stories from Vietnamese community in Taiwan. The work will be a social platform for interactions for exchanges, collaborations, and sharing resources (includes performative events such as cooking, karaoke together...)

About the Artist

Tuan Mami

Tuan Mami lives and works in Hanoi. Mami is an interdisciplinary-experimental artist, working with site-specific installation, video, performance and conceptual art, who constantly explores new mediums, means and methods of evolving with reflective questioning and social research.

His focus deals with questions about life, social interactions between people, and people with their environment, to reconstruct situations into ones that engage people or objects from a particular reality to enter and be involved together in a social process. Other than as a creator, he is co-founder of MAC-Hanoi (2012); co-founder and board member of Nha San Collective in Hanoi (2013–ongoing); visiting faculty at San Francisco Art Institute, USA (2013); co-founder and artistic director of Á Space— An Experimental Art Space (2018–ongoing).

About the Artist

Tuan Mami

Tuan Mami lives and works in Hanoi. Mami is an interdisciplinary-experimental artist, working with site-specific installation, video, performance and conceptual art, who constantly explores new mediums, means and methods of evolving with reflective questioning and social research.

His focus deals with questions about life, social interactions between people, and people with their environment, to reconstruct situations into ones that engage people or objects from a particular reality to enter and be involved together in a social process. Other than as a creator, he is co-founder of MAC-Hanoi (2012); co-founder and board member of Nha San Collective in Hanoi (2013–ongoing); visiting faculty at San Francisco Art Institute, USA (2013); co-founder and artistic director of Á Space— An Experimental Art Space (2018–ongoing).

＊ Works in this exhibition gallery contain pollen. Visitors with respiratory symptoms and immunodeficiency should wear masks when entering.